The Next Mrs Russo

“One second,” I murmur, then use my phone to do a search on ‘questions to ask your crush.’ The pressure to come up with a question is making me panic so I click on the first article that comes up. “Okay! Who is your celebrity crush?”

Ugh. What a dumb question. Why in the hell would I want to know who his celebrity crush is? I don’t. Like I need that idea rubbed in my face. “Never mind,” I say quickly before he has a chance to answer. “Skip that,” I add, as I scroll through the rest of this list. ‘What was your first impression of me?’ is another question. As if I’m going to ask that. ‘What’s your love language?’ is another.

This article is the worst.

“Are we”—he pauses as if he’s searching his memory for something he missed—“doing an interview?”

“No! Ugh, forget it.” I close my phone in defeat. I cannot find good questions while under this kind of pressure. “Do you want to talk about sports or something?”

“Do you want to talk about sports?”

“Not particularly, no. But I wouldn’t mind listening to you talk about them.”

That earns me another side-eye.

If there’s a prize for being great at flirting, I am never winning it. Like not even a participation trophy, or a sad ribbon.

Whatever. He got set up by his mom so he’s not getting an award either.

“What did you do today?” I ask, fidgeting with the car vents before I relax into my seat. I wish I’d put a snack into my clutch. I’m starving and since there’s no need to be a delicate lady on this pseudo-date, I could really go for a handful of jelly beans right now or a little snack pack of trail mix.

“I spent the day researching having my mother involuntarily committed to a mental institution. And you?”

“Oh, I saw your mom earlier today!” The memory makes me smile. “She stopped in to—” I pause. I’m not going to humiliate myself by repeating that she stopped in to verify I was going to show up tonight and I surely don’t want to get her into more trouble with Warren by repeating her lie about how much he was looking forward to it. Recalling it makes me laugh though. “Just to shop, I guess,” I improvise. “I really like her. She’s kinda nuts. But a fun, endearing nuts. Am I allowed to say your mom is nuts if I mean it as a compliment?”

That earns me a smile and a small shake of his head. “She is something, indeed. Did she offer you a bonus to secure her another grandchild?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” I quip. Except now I’m thinking about where babies come from, which means I’m thinking about having sex with Warren. It’s not that much of a stretch to be fair, since I’ve imagined it before plenty of times.

He’s real good at it, in my imagination.

Anyway, I need to focus before I accidentally offer to have sex with him out loud.

“So your mom is married to your campaign manager?” I ask, though I already know that she is. “Just one big happy family, huh?”

Warren nods slightly. “Artie’s good for her. She was lonely after my father passed. Besides, he keeps tabs on her. Most of the time.”

“Have they been together a long time?” Warren’s dad was the governor of New York City a couple of decades ago, so he’s got a Wikipedia page, meaning I know some pretty generic details about his family. Per my recollection, his parents were married when his father passed away. It was years ago.

“He was my father’s best friend actually.”

Oh, dicey.

“It wasn’t dicey in the least. You have one of those really interesting imaginations, I take it?”

“Did I say that out loud?” Ring a ding, I wonder if I offered to have sex with him out loud too?

“You did.”

I pause for a long moment. Okay, pretty sure the only thing I said out loud was the dicey bit about his mom and his campaign manager. Whew. “Well, not to give away all my secrets just yet, but the Figment ride at Epcot has always been my favorite.”

“The what?”

“You know, the one with the purple dragon named Figment?” I start waving my hands around in a weird dinosaur claw shape, but I’m not even sure why because Figment was a dragon not a dinosaur. The important thing to know here is that I stop myself before I start singing the imagination song that accompanies that particular Disney ride.

It’s really good. The song.

“Never mind.” I drop my hands. “It’s a Disney ride about imagination.”

“Ahh.” Warren nods like any of this makes sense to him. “Well, there’s no dicey story here. Artie had been divorced from his first wife for years, and then Dad died and”—he shrugs—“and they hit it off.”